Martha Beck

“If whatever you’re doing isn’t working, don’t do it harder.”

we tend to measure our own well-being not by how we feel, but by how our lives compare to other people’s.

It takes incredible self-discipline to go against your nature.

No one can give us pure integrity: knowing our truth is something we can and must learn to do on our own.

As they say, the teacher appears when the student is ready.

streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power

No external guide you’ll meet will ever be as accurate as the teacher in your soul, and none can ever be as constant.

On an inhale, think the words, I allow everything in the universe to be as it is in this moment. After all, you can’t make it different in this moment, so just stop trying. For now.
As you exhale, think, I surrender all resistance to the universe being as it is in this moment. For now.
Continue to think I allow on every in-breath, and I surrender on every out-breath. You don’t have to surrender and allow any moment but this present one. But in this instant, let it all be. Accept every out-breath as a death to this fleeting moment, every in-breath a rebirth to this new one. Relax into the rhythm of letting go and opening up, for now.

As Epictetus wrote in the second century AD, “What upsets people is not what happens to them, but their thoughts about what happens.”

Our worst psychological suffering comes from thoughts that we genuinely believe, while simultaneously knowing they aren’t true.